I Pray I’m A Chicken Little

I hope I’m being hyperbolic and looking at the glass half full, but I’m fairly certain the number of Covid cases will surge up again in the next six to eight weeks. This surge will be due to the highly transmissible variants, now being identified in several states within the US.

My primary concern about this next surge is that it will overwhelm the acute care system’s resources to care for these patients. We have come close to this point in the recent past, particularly in areas such as Los Angeles, but if projections are correct this time, we may not be so lucky (if you can even use that word in the context of this terrible tragedy).

The surge will strain resources in almost every imaginable manner — bed capacity may be insufficient to handle the number of inpatients, staff, who are already stressed to their physical and psychological limits, will be asked to ration care, which is stressful beyond imagination, and healthcare organizations will be further financially burdened as they struggle to continue or reopen services such as elective surgeries from which they traditionally have gleaned most of their profit.

So, what do we do?

1. Healthcare organizations need to make sure they’ve got the leadership team in place to manage through this time of unprecedented challenge.

Boards need to take seriously their responsibility to oversee management teams in hospitals and healthcare systems. If any managers think the way forward is to go back to business as usual, they are seriously mistaken.

2. We need a rapid (and I mean immediate) emergency relief package from the federal government. We cannot allow partisan politics to slow this process down as lives are genuinely on the line. Everyone who cares about their fellow citizens needs to contact their congressperson or senator and urge them to come together and quickly pass a relief package that meets the need.

3. We individually need to double down on our personal protective practices. I know we’re tired of hearing about masking, social distancing, and handwashing, but these items are more critical now than ever.

4. We need to all get vaccinated as soon as possible (see above re. Relief package, but also remember that vaccines do work, and no one can justify being an anti-vaxxer in this time of peril.